Latest news with #Ben-Hur
Indianapolis Star
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indianapolis Star
'Zoomies!', 'Ben-Hur' and 'The Chevalier' on Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra's new season
A slate of soloists and world premieres highlight the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra's new season, called "In Motion." Across the fall of 2025 and first half of 2026, the ensemble will invite pianist Gabriela Martinez, guitarist Sharon Isbin, and violinists Tim Fain and Brendon Elliott among others to perform. The season's world premieres will include Michael Shapiro's "Zoomies!" — inspired by dogs and their playful bursts of energy. The ensemble also will continue its tradition of performing a live score to a classic movie with 1925's "Ben-Hur," starring Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman. Unless otherwise noted, all performances are at Butler University's Schrott Center for the Arts, 610 W. 46th St. Find more information and buy season subscriptions now at Packs of two tickets, called duet packs, will go on sale July 1. Single tickets will be on sale Aug. 11. Oct. 18 The ensemble will play the score by Carl Davis live during the silent film screening in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the epic. Nov. 22 Guitarist Sharon Isbin will perform Karen LeFrak's Miami Concerto. Also on the program are Jacques Ibert's Divertissement, Maurice Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin" and Dmitri Shostakovich's Ballet Suite No. 1. Dec. 13 at Indiana Landmarks Center, 1201 Central Ave. The Christmas portion of George Frideric Handel's iconic "Messiah" will again be part of the December concert. Rounding out the program will be Ralph Vaughan Williams' arrangement of "Greensleeves" and Gerald Finzi's "In Terra Pax." Dec. 14 at Indiana Landmarks Center Also returning this season is the sing-along that encourages patrons to join in on the "Messiah" and traditional holiday carols. Jan. 31, 2026 Violinist Tim Fain will join the orchestra, which will perform two world premieres by Shapiro — "Zoomies!" and his Violin Concerto: At the Shore of the Sea. Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11 and The Hebrides Overture are also on the program. March 21, 2026 Pianist Gabriela Martinez will join the ensemble for a concert that includes the world premiere of Stacy Garrop's "Chroma," Aaron Copland's "Three Latin American Sketches," Manuel de Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" and Louis Moreau Gottschalk's Symphony No. 2. April 17-19, 2026 The ensemble will collaborate with Dance Kaleidoscope for a program that includes John Adams' "Shaker Loops" (choregraphed by Joshua Blake Carter), George Gershwin's "An American in Paris" (choreographed by David Hochoy) and Philip Glass' "Glass Pieces" (choreographed by Sean Aaron Carmon). May 16, 2026, at the Madam Walker Legacy Center, 617 Indiana Ave. Violinist Brendon Elliott will perform in a musical play inspired by the life of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a composer, virtuoso violinist, fencer and military leader. The play, by Bill Barclay, uses live orchestra, costumed actors and solo violin.
Los Angeles Times
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Stewart Copeland plays with the animals on latest project ‘Wild Concerto'
Stewart Copeland is best known as one-third of the Police, the chart-topping trio that called it quits after five acclaimed albums released between 1978-1983 and launched Sting to solo stardom. With the Police, which also included guitarist Andy Summers, out of the picture, the drummer-percussionist changed course and became an in-demand film and TV score composer, working on such notable films as 'Rumble Fish' and 'Wall Street' as well as TV's 'The Equalizer,' 'Dead Like Me' and more. After a worldwide Police reunion tour, which was the highest-grossing trek in 2007, Copeland again pivoted, scoring live orchestra music for the classic film 'Ben-Hur' in 2014. He later also reimagined the Police catalog with a pair of releases, 2023's 'Police Deranged for Orchestra' and the world music exploration 'Police Beyond Borders' with collaborator Ricky Kej, whom he also worked with on the 2021 album 'Divine Tides,' which won a Grammy for new age album. Our chat with Copeland, 72, was originally tied to his speaking tour, 'Have I Said Too Much? The Police, Hollywood and Other Adventures,' but the Los Angeles date was scrapped in wake of the Palisades and Altadena wildfires. Ever the raconteur, Copeland is taking the speaking tour to Europe this spring and fall. He also has a new album, 'Wild Concerto,' which is out April 18. We spoke to Copeland, first via Zoom and then a follow-up phone call, about his new project and his busy creative life outside of the Police. Tell me about your new album. This isn't the Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds' or Pink Floyd's 'Animals' with just a few random animal sounds sprinkled in. You seem to be more committed. Stewart Copeland: Well, yeah, the animals get a much bigger dressing room on this. It's not just called animal sounds. It is animal sounds. How did it come about? Incoming phone call. Platoon Records, which is owned by Apple. They acquired this library from a naturalist, Martyn Stewart, who is like the [British biologist and TV host] David Attenborough of sound. That's how he's been described. He spent his life on his hands and knees out in the jungles and in the mountains recording mostly bird sounds, but all these other animals as well. He has this huge library of these sounds and they're wondering what to do with it. They said, 'How about we do some music?' So they called me and said, 'Can you work with this?' And I said, 'Why yes, I can. Perhaps the reason they called me was because I have been using found sound, beginning with 'Rumble Fish,' where Francis [Ford Coppola]'s ears pricked up when I started talking about doing loops with machines, billiard ball breaks, with dogs barking, all kinds of sounds in 1984.' So how did you compose music using the recordings of animal sounds? The folders that Martyn would send me were from different locales where the birds might have stopped, ecospheres of these different zones. I'd start with the background sounds, which are just a forest-scape or a wind-scape, and then I would look for the rhythmic elements, certain birds, which are rhythmic, and I'd build rhythms out of that. I didn't alter any of the sounds. I didn't change the pitch. I didn't change the rhythm, but I placed them all very carefully so I build up a rhythm with these rhythm animals, the rhythm section. And then I looked for the long lines, mostly birds, the wolves also have some very long soloistic melodic lines, which are on pitch. But I put a trombone next to those bad boys. And now we've got your [John] Coltrane wolves. Interesting. So, you didn't autotune any of the animal sounds? No autotune. No time stretching. You mentioned 'Rumble Fish.' When I put on the album for the first time, I definitely felt those 'Rumble Fish' vibes. Well, that's all the percussion that I did all by myself here in the studio. After doing two albums of reinterpretations of music by the Police was back to nature the only place to go from there? I forgive myself for looking backwards and doing Police stuff because I'm confident in my forward motion. Right now, I'm running a gigantic opera I wrote and this album about animals, so I'm moving forward doing cool stuff, which makes me more relaxed about looking over my shoulder. It seems like this is sort of a natural progression from your film composing and orchestrated work. Yes, absolutely. The other love of my life is the orchestra and all the amazing things it can do. The orchestra has such a huge vocabulary. In my short lifespan, I probably won't do more than scratch the surface of what an orchestra can do, but I'm working on it. This album was produced by Ricky Kej, who you've worked with in the past. What did he bring to the project? He's an incredible musician and a great producer and he works way over there in Bangalore. He came to Abbey Road [in London], which is where we recorded the orchestra and produced a session. Having a producer is a very new thing for me. I went through my whole career never having a producer. The Police never had a producer. We just had recording engineers. And so recently I had an experience with a producer and, man, what took me so long? This is great. Somebody else to lean on, to carry the load and to hit me upside the head when I need to be hit upside the head. But didn't the Police have producers listed along with the band, like Hugh Padham on 'Synchronicity'? He was used to producing Genesis and other civilized, well-behaved, respectful musicians not to be stuck on an island with three a— going at it. He did know where to put the microphones while dodging pizza. He did actually get a good recording. If there was a [more] active producer, he could have helped sort of break up those fights or keep things civil, but maybe not. Are you still playing polo? [Copeland's logo on his website is a polo player riding a horse] No. I traded all the horses in for children, and they turned out to be even more expensive. I've got seven kids, which is more expensive than 12 horses. Wow. What's the age spread of your kids? [Starts to say 50 but slurs his words to make it undecipherable] down to 25. And then I've got five grandchildren. When you start lying about your kids' age you know you're getting up there. What was the oldest? I didn't quite make that out? [Once again starts saying 50 but slurs his words]. Fifty-something? Yeah, 50-something. We'll go with that. But you still seem young and spry. My kids became middle-aged before I became decrepit. I could always outrun, out-climb, out-sport all of my kids. And then I started to get creaky around age 70. Are any of your kids involved in music or showbiz? Just one. He's in London. He's actually a filmmaker but he has the gift of music. He picks up any instrument and the music just falls out of his fingers. And one of my grandchildren, who is 8. Young Arthur hasn't got any musical chops, but whenever they come over he goes straight to the grand piano and he's looking for cool stuff on there. You can see that it's just there in his DNA.
New York Times
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Marvin Levy, Oscar-Winning Publicist to Spielberg, Dies at 96
Reporters trying to get interviews with Steven Spielberg would sometimes grouse that his publicist's job amounted to speaking a single word: 'No.' But Martin Levy, who served as Mr. Spielberg's publicist for 42 years, was responsible for much more than body blocking the fifth estate (which he usually did with a gentlemanly grace). Mr. Spielberg did not become Mr. Spielberg because of his filmmaking alone: For 42 years, Mr. Levy was behind the scenes — promoting, polishing, spinning, safeguarding, strategizing — to ensure that his boss was viewed worldwide as Hollywood's de facto head of state. In addition to representing Mr. Spielberg personally, Mr. Levy helped devise and lead publicity campaigns for 32 movies he directed, including several with sensitive subject matter, like 'The Color Purple' (1985), 'Schindler's List' (1993) and 'Munich' (2005). Mr. Levy died on April 7 at his home in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 96. His death was announced by Mr. Spielberg's production company Amblin Entertainment. Over Mr. Levy's 73-year entertainment career — an eternity in fickle and ageist Hollywood — he worked on more than 150 movies and TV shows. He helped turn 'Ben-Hur' (1959), 'Taxi Driver' (1976) and 'Kramer vs. Kramer' (1979) into hits. After joining Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Levy was involved with nearly every film made by Amblin and another of Mr. Spielberg's companies, DreamWorks, including 'Back to the Future' (1985), 'Men in Black' (1997) and 'Shrek' (2001). 'Simplicity was his mantra,' Mr. Spielberg said in an email. 'The bicycle across the moon image we used for 'E.T.' or the hand of the little girl in red being held by Oscar Schindler. Those are simply two examples of Marvin's indispensable place in my Amblin family.' Mr. Levy received an honorary Oscar in 2018. He is the only publicist in the motion picture academy's 98-year history to be given one, making him a folk hero among Hollywood's unseen publicity armies. 'A marketing department can make you aware of a title, but it takes something of a storyteller,' Tom Hanks said of Mr. Levy at the ceremony, 'to get an audience hooked on the story without giving away the story.' Marvin Jay Levy was born in Manhattan on Nov. 16, 1928, to Max Levy, a real estate appraiser, and Edna (Hess) Levy. He graduated in 1949 from New York University, where he majored in English and was part of the R.O.T.C. program. After a brief stint writing questions for a game show (he was fired because his were too easy), Mr. Levy found work with Tex McCrary, an old-school public relations man, and his wife, Jinx Falkenburg, an actress and model. Tex and Jinx, as they were known, helped popularize the TV talk-show format in the 1950s. Mr. Levy credited them with igniting his interest in publicity. In 1952, he took a two-year hiatus to serve in the Air Force. He was stationed in Michigan and assigned to advertising and public relations work. He returned to his job with Tex and Jinx in 1954. By the mid-1970s, Mr. Levy had moved to Los Angeles to work at Columbia Pictures — most notably shepherding Mr. Spielberg's intimate 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (1977) into theaters. As the film moved through postproduction, Columbia executives began to worry that it would fizzle. It was nothing like Mr. Spielberg's pulpy 'Jaws,' which had riveted audiences two years earlier. Maybe the studio should scale back its marketing and distribution plan? 'Marvin said, 'You're all wrong,' and moved heaven and earth to make 'Close Encounters' a success,' said Terry Press, Amblin's president of strategy and communications. Mr. Levy retired last year. He married Carol Schild, who worked in advertising, in 1952. She survives him, along with their sons, Don and Doug, and two grandsons. 'She always knew what my job entailed,' Mr. Levy said of his wife when he accepted his Academy Award. 'But most friends and relations outside the industry really had no clue. I never could explain the full range of what the job really entails.' 'At least now,' he quipped, 'they'll know I got an Oscar for it.'
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marvin Levy, Legendary Publicist Behind Steven Spielberg's Biggest Hits, Dies at 96
Marvin Levy, the legendary Hollywood publicist known for his decades-long partnership with Steven Spielberg and for being the first member of his profession to receive recognition from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, died Monday. He was 96. 'Marvin's passing is a huge loss for me and our industry writ large. There are many talented PR executives, but Marvin was one of a kind. For over 50 years, he was a deeply loyal and exceptional collaborator who was respected and appreciated by all those who were lucky enough to learn from his counsel. When it came to handling the press, he had no peer,' Spielberg said in a statement. 'To the media-and the world of exhibition, Marvin was the face of Amblin. We were opposite ends of the movie-making process. Every time i reached the end of production on a film, Marvin's work had only begun. Through countless films, tv series, Amblin events, awards campaigns and our public relations strategy—this is where Marvin came alive. He loved his work—and was endlessly enthusiastic about our business. He was creative, innovative and respected for his knowledge and honesty. He was excited to figure how new and better ways to present films to audiences. As a result, he was the first and only publicist to receive an Academy Award.' 'He was equally dedicated to his beloved wife of 73 years, Carol, and their children, Don and Doug as well as their grandsons Daniel and Brian. I am grateful for all our years together. Marvin never failed to make me laugh, he never stopped smiling. We will miss you Marvin. You will always be in our hearts and your memory will always make us smile,' the director continued. Born Nov. 16, 1928 in New York, Levy attended NYU and served in the Air Force, where he first worked in public relations and advertising out of Selfridge AFB in Michigan. He moved into entertainment in the late 1940s, working as a writer and producer before being hired in publicity for MGM. During his years with MGM, he handled local promotional efforts for legendary films including 'Gigi' and 'Ben-Hur.' He moved to the PR firm Blowitz, Thomas and Canton in 1964, remaining with them until the company disbanded a decade later, after which he relocated to Los Angeles and ended up at Columbia Pictures. It was there that among his projects for the studio was marketing 'Close Encounters of the Third King,' Spielberg's follow up to his breakthrough hit 'Jaws.' The pair formed a close friendship, and in later years Spielberg would refer to Levy as a father figure. Levy eventually left Columbia to work for Spielberg full time, first at the director's Amblin Entertainment and later at Dreamworks. During their decades of collaboration, Levy handled promotion and awards season pushes for some of Spielberg's most important work, including 'E.T.,' 'Jurassic Park,' 'Schindler's List,' 'Saving Private Ryan,' 'Munich,' 'The Color Purple,' 'Lincoln' and 'Bridge of Spies.' He also handled promotion on the 'Back to the Future' trilogy, 'Gladiator,' and more. His impact on Hollywood over his career is difficult to overstate, and appropriately, in 2018 he became the first, and as of this writing only publicist to receive Academy recognition. At that year's Academy Awards, Levy received an honorary Oscar 'for an exemplary career in publicity that has brought films to the minds, hearts and souls of audiences all over the world.' In addition to serving on the Academy's Board of Governors for 23 years, Levy was a supporter of the Shoah Foundation, Righteous Persons Foundation, and Starlight Children's Foundation. He's survived by Carol, his wife of 73 years, their two sons and grandsons. Levy's funeral is planned for Friday, April 11th at 10 am at Mount Sinai cemetery, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive in Los Angeles, CA 90068. The post Marvin Levy, Legendary Publicist Behind Steven Spielberg's Biggest Hits, Dies at 96 appeared first on TheWrap.
The Independent
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The sad decline of Gore Vidal, America's most acerbic writer and fearsome feuder
G ore Vidal said that he hoped to be remembered as 'the person who wrote the best sentences of his time'. It was a typically vainglorious boast from an author whose finest writing remains overshadowed by his reputation as one of the most waspish and spiteful public figures in recent memory. Vidal, who was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr at the West Point Military Academy on 3 October 1925, wrote 25 novels, 14 screenplays, eight stage plays and 26 works of nonfiction, including his majestical essays. He was also a master of the insulting one-liner. Most of the obituaries that followed his death on 31 July 2012 featured his celebrated epigrams, such as: 'Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.' His grandfather was renowned senator TP Gore and his father, Eugene, was director of air commerce under President Franklin D Roosevelt. Vidal loathed his mother Nina, whom he described as a bullying, self-pitying alcoholic. After divorcing Vidal's father in 1935, she married Hugh D Auchincloss, the stepfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Vidal never missed a chance to bring up his connections to the Kennedys. He made few close friends at Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and was described as the class 'hypocrite' in a poll of fellow students. At 17, he enlisted and served as first mate of an army freight-supply ship, describing his war experiences as 'strange, not lovely and cold'. Army service gave him material for a novel, however, and his life in the public eye began at 22, when he published his World War Two-themed book Williwaw. Two years later, in 1948, he published The City and the Pillar, a novel that dealt openly with queerness. The book was denounced as depraved, and Vidal was, for several years, blacklisted by newspapers, including The New York Times. He resorted to publishing mystery novels under the pseudonyms Edgar Box, Katherine Everard, and Cameron Kay, and made money by writing for television and the movies. He was a contract writer at MGM, working on the screenplay for Ben-Hur. By the end of the 1960s, after a failed run at Congress and publication of three successful novels, including Myra Breckinridge (1968), he was a well-known television pundit, popular for his combative style and humorous put-downs. His infamous August 1968 row over the Vietnam war with the reactionary commentator William F Buckley has racked up more than a million views on YouTube. In it, Vidal described Buckley as 'Hitler, without the charm' and then called him a 'crypto-Nazi'. 'Now listen, you queer,' Buckley snarled. 'Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.' The pair were later embroiled in a fruitless three-year lawsuit. Well, Vidal did joke that after you turn 50, litigation replaces sex. Vicious feuds were a feature of his relationship with other writers. He sued (and was countersued by) Truman Capote, after the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's claimed that Vidal had been thrown out of the White House by Bobby Kennedy for being 'drunk and obnoxious'. Vidal later told this very newspaper: 'Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.' Although Vidal's fiction won him admirers – especially for Julian (1964), a vivid and painstakingly researched historical novel about the fourth-century Roman emperor – he was prickly about authors who were feted by critics. In 1996, Vidal wrote a 10,000-word diatribe about Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike for The Times Literary Supplement, claiming the author of the Rabbit series 'describes to no purpose'. He later told an interviewer: 'I can't stand Updike. I'm supposedly jealous; but I out-sell him. He's just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top.' Male writers weren't the only targets of his acerbic humour. When asked to name the three most dispiriting words in the English language, he replied: 'Joyce Carol Oates.' Vidal's confrontations were not always restricted to word spats. He once wrote a graphic account of a brawl he had with a married merchant marine, whom he had picked up in Seattle. His most physically violent public clashes, though, were with Norman Mailer, author of The Naked and the Dead. In 1971, in the green room before an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, Mailer headbutted Vidal after Vidal compared him to convicted killer Charles Manson. Six years later, at a party in New York, Mailer punched Vidal to the floor, where he wiped a speck of blood from his mouth and said: 'Once again words fail Norman Mailer.' That was the thing about Vidal: he was extremely witty. When Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, called his work 'meretricious', the American instantly retorted, 'Really? Well, meretricious to you and a happy new year.' When he was attacked by a right-wing evangelist, Vidal quipped: 'I have just been denounced as the Antichrist. I am walking on air. What a promotion!' He was close friends with the great and the good, including playwright Tennessee Williams, actor Paul Newman and Princess Margaret. Anaïs Nin described Vidal as 'luminous and manly'. Vidal, who was six feet tall, had Ivy League good looks and liked to keep his dark hair immaculately kept. He squinted to avoid wearing glasses as he was concerned about how they made him look. In 1974, a Paris Review interviewer noted that 'his teeth are meticulously capped'. He made no secret of his prodigious love life as a young man, revealing in his memoir Palimpsest that he had had more than 1,000 sexual encounters with men and women by the age of 25. One of his conquests was Jack Kerouac, whom he met in 1949 at the Metropolitan Opera. 'As everybody knows, I f***ed Kerouac,' he bragged nonchalantly in a 1994 interview. Vidal later lived with companion and copywriter Howard Austen for five decades, even though he insisted 'love is not my bag'. Possibly, but this was also a man whose final request was to be buried at Rock Creek Cemetery, beside Austen and his own near teenage lover Jimmy Trimble, who had been killed at Iwo Jima in 1945. But Vidal was much more than a talk-show star and literary gadfly. He deserves respect for his historical fiction. Vidal's profound sense of America's past was demonstrated in his Narratives of Empire novels – Washington, D.C. (1967), Burr (1973), 1876 (1976), Lincoln (1984), Empire (1987), Hollywood (1990), and The Golden Age (2000) – which, taken together, offer a coherent view of the nation's decline. I would also highly recommend Essays, United States 1952-92, a deserved winner of the 1993 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Some books, including his religious satire Live From Golgotha, are perhaps best forgotten. Vidal detested politicians in general – 'they tell lies, even when they don't have to,' he remarked – and was insightful about the failings of America as it entered what he called 'the Dark Ages'. 'What we are seeing,' he wrote in 2006, 'are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking'. The man who memorably described Ronald Reagan as 'a triumph of the embalmer's art' would have had a field day with Donald Trump. For all the causticity he reserved for others, Vidal could also turn a cold, analytical eye on his own character. He once said: 'I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.' After spending time with Vidal in Italy, writer Erica Jong described Vidal as 'a voice for sanity in a mad world' and yet still, came away depressed by her encounter with 'the coldest man I've ever met and the saddest'. As he aged, Vidal's pronouncements grew more and more outlandish. He befriended Timothy McVeigh, the far-right domestic terrorist whose bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. In an interview with The Independent, he called McVeigh 'a noble boy'. Long-term admirer Christopher Hitchens said that the 9/11 terrorist attack 'accentuated a crackpot strain' in the author whose writing had lost much of the sparkle, wit and profundity that had lifted his best work. Hitchens noted that Vidal had also produced 'a small anthology of half-argued and half-written shock pieces that either insinuated or asserted that the administration had known in advance of the attacks on New York and Washington and was seeking a pretext to build a long-desired pipeline across Afghanistan'. In an interview with The Independent, Hitchens repeated his attack on Vidal, saying the author 'openly says that the Bush administration was 'probably' in on the 9/11 attacks, a criminal complicity that would 'certainly fit them to a T'. When Vidal learned of Hitchens's criticism, he denounced him, adding: 'What has he ever done?' Vidal had always been gossipy, sharp-tongued and keen on a cruel quip, but alcohol abuse, the mental and physical effects of ageing and possibly a realisation that his work had fallen off all brought out a mean-spiritedness that was deeply unappealing. In his 2021 memoir Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life, actor Alan Cumming offered a dismal account of his trip to stay with Vidal in Ravello, Italy, shortly after 9/11. Cumming recalled that Vidal was drunk on whisky (he devoured single-malt Macallan), slurred his words and rattled out snide observations. Perhaps most damning of all, Cumming, who compared Vidal's behaviour to that of 'a bitter old queen', said he found the grand old man of American letters to be 'boring'. Vidal often described himself as being 'lucky' and indeed when weighing up his fortunes to his friend and fellow writer Martin Amis, Vidal said simply, 'My God, what a lucky life.' That may have been true of most of it, but not of the final years. After turning 80, he was mourning Austen, who died in 2003, and suffering constant problems with his titanium knee. His drinking was out of control and he was plagued by the effects of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (the disturbingly named 'wet brain'), including hallucinations, paranoia and loss of bladder control. He reached, in biographer Jay Parini's words, 'a stage in alcoholism when the drinker begins to lose touch with reality'. His nephew, screenwriter Burr Steers, painted an equally grim picture of Vidal's 'miserable, drawn-out, deranged decline', with the emaciated author beset by diabetes and congestive heart failure. Vidal believed the CIA had infiltrated his home and, according to Tim Teeman in In Bed With Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood and the Private World of an American Master, would suddenly shout insults such as, 'Your mother was a Polack!'. In 2009, by which time he was in a wheelchair, Vidal complained to an interviewer about America becoming 'the Yellow Man's Burden', bemoaning a time in the near future when the Chinese 'will have us running coolie cars'. The image of a cantankerous, intolerant and delusional old man is unpleasant. I prefer to think of the dazzling essayist, so capable of provoking both laughter and outrage, and of a public speaker so adroit at lampooning political dishonesty and chicanery. Before his death, from complications of pneumonia, he bequeathed his $37m fortune and all literary assets to Harvard, a choice two distant relatives failed to overturn in court. Vidal, though, was delighted to leave his estate to a university that was a repository for the Henry James collection, a writer Vidal described as 'the master of the novel'. Although Vidal's fiction never matched the elegance or complexity of James, he did firmly believe that they both shared a love of ambiguity and irony. Although it is only 13 years since Vidal left what he called 'this ark of fools', he already seems a polymath from a lost age, the sort of acerbic, insightful political commentator missing in a social media age of foghorn popular pundits such as Piers Morgan. But when all is said and done, fame is fleeting; Vidal's desire to be remembered as the person who wrote the best sentences of his age was always doomed. At Harvard, according to Leslie Morris, the Gore Vidal Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, the item that attracts the greatest attention is Vidal's screenplay for the porn film Caligula – which he himself described as 'easily one of the worst films ever made'.
